Microsoft plans to release a community technology preview (CTP) of two new Hadoop connectors, one for SQL Server and one for the Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW) solution.

SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW) is described by Microsoft as a complete, high-scale data warehousing solution that enterprises can use to manage and enable self-service business intelligence with SQL Server.

In addition to the Hadoop connectors, Microsoft has released a second Appliance Update (AU2) to PDW that adds more programming options, along with four new connectors for heterogeneous BI (Business Intelligence) & ETL (Extract, Load and Transform) environments.

Appliance updates are similar to service packs, but contain both hardware and software updates. The new appliance update adds features that users were unhappy were missing, including multi-statement batches, T-SQL variables, temporary tables, conditional logic and control flow statements. The new connectors mean PDW can be used with SAP Business Objects and Informatica.

The Hadoop connectors will let customers with unstructured data stored in Hadoop analyze it alongside structured SQL data. The connectors will let you transfer data between Hadoop and SQL Server/PDW.

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